Council Candidate Handcuffing Was Wrong, Vons Says

A Vons supermarket executive plans to apologize to a Los Angeles City Council candidate who was handcuffed by a store guard in a dispute over handing out campaign flyers to Vons customers in Granada Hills, a spokeswoman for the supermarket chain said Monday.

The candidate, Arthur (Larry) Kagele, unmollified, said he may sue.

Vickie Sanders, Vons media relations chief, agreed it was “wrong” that Kagele, 47, a veteran Los Angeles police detective, was handcuffed by a private guard Sunday during what she called “an unfortunate incident.”

“I have a regional vice president who is trying to contact Mr. Kagele right now to apologize,” she said.

But she also maintained that the store manager had acted within Vons policy and the law in trying to get Kagele to halt his leafletting.

Two customers had complained to the manager that they were upset that Kagele “had tried to stop them as they entered the store and tried to put campaign literature in their hands when they didn’t want it,” Sanders said.

She said California law does not give political activists unrestricted access to private property.

Meanwhile, Kagele, who is seeking to unseat Councilman Hal Bernson in the city’s 12th District race, said Vons had “humiliated” him and that he will confer with his attorney about a possible lawsuit against the company. “I feel I was falsely arrested,” Kagele said.

Kagele also denied that he had sought to thrust himself or his literature on customers. “No way did I do that,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that because that’s a good way to lose votes.”

Kagele said he was handcuffed for 30 to 45 minutes after refusing to comply with the request of store management that he stop distributing his campaign literature to customers at the entrance to the Vons store at Balboa Avenue and San Fernando Mission Road. He was then released.

“This could really hurt me,” Kagele said. “People I had given flyers to at the supermarket see me as a candidate one minute and the next as a criminal.”

Kagele said Monday evening that he has already gotten 13 messages of support from residents who read newspaper accounts of the incident.

A 1980 California Supreme Court ruling in the so-called Pruneyard case--left untouched by the U.S. Supreme Court--held that people in California have a First Amendment right to conduct political activity in shopping centers under reasonable limits.

That right is not recognized in many other states, according to Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which was involved in the Pruneyard case and subsequent litigation to clarify the landmark decision in that case.

Kagele is one of five candidates seeking Bernson’s ouster in the April 9 election.